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Leafbook

So yesterday I was playing Ni No Kuni II, and it’s a rather standard action RPG with some really smart (and cute!) mechanics and a good story. It also looks really cute: it makes the most of the cell-shaded engine it uses, making everything look like hand-drawn animation even though it’s all CGI.
Anyway, I was following along in the plot, and I met a merchant in a dungeon. And they give me a ‘Leafbook’. This turns out to be a Facebook equivalent for this magical fantasy world! Plot-events are shown as posts, complete with comments! Every once in a while, you get a notification there are new posts, and you can go read them. You can even ‘like’ the posts!

The posts themselves give little hints and a view of the world beyond your adventure, which is quite cool. But imagine the design meeting for this game, a big-budget number, and highly anticipated. And then someone says: “You know what? We should totally create something like Facebook in our game! Come on, it’ll be fun!”